DVD review: Under the Volcano

Malcolm Lowry's flawed masterpiece, one of the great novels of the 20th century, was fortunate to come the way of the 78-year-old John Huston. He knew Mexico, he did well by literary works (Moby-Dick, The Red Badge of Courage) and was fascinated by faithful failures, heroic losers, doomed questors. Lowry's hero, the alcoholic British consul in Cuernavaca, is a Huston hero on a colossal scale, and his sense of damnation is a reflection of the decline of Western civilisation as he views it on the last day of his life in 1938. Albert Finney is superb as the consul and he's ably supported by Jacqueline Bisset as his ex-wife and Anthony Andrews as his half-brother. Huston and co-writer Guy Gallo ironed out a convoluted novel into a linear narrative, but retained its political thrust and striking motifs and symbols. An admirable film that does justice to Lowry and invites us to read or reread his book.